Visa exemption if travelling to the US by airline.
I suspect the US has a lot more anti vaccers, as a % of the population, mostly in the “middle” of the country.
Silvaire has a point as usual.
If having 0,2% of a population infected with a highly infectious disease whose mortality is lower than 0.1%, justifies separating citizens in 2 classes…. I eat my hat.
If you think vaxes will do anything to stop this, look at israeli numbers.
To me, liberal democracies are terminated in W Europe, if they ever were.
Silvaire wrote:
The only rational justification for it is that CV-19 entered the US from Europe,
This would not qualify as “rational” because it is obviously anti European fake news (the first documented case of Covid in the US has been a traveler from China in Whashington) and – as you wrote – even if it was true the virus could have come from anywhere in the world as spread could not have been controlled also from other regions.
As usual, I agree with much of what @Silvaire says.
Sometimes I think Im more American than European in outlook.
Regards, SD..
Jujupilote wrote:
If you think vaxes will do anything to stop this, look at israeli numbers.
Israel got stuck at about 60% population vaxxed. Nobody ever claimed that 60% of the population vaxxed will suppress spread. The problem in Israel is exactly the combination of a not sufficient vaccination rate with a population in the false safety that they are “leading in vaccination” and therefore protected. Jujupilote wrote:
If having 0,2% of a population infected with a highly infectious disease whose mortality is lower than 0.1%, justifies separating citizens in 2 classes….
Which country is “separating citizens into 2 cases”? In almost all countries it is forbidden to smoke in kindergardens. In most countries it is also forbidden to smoke inside public buildings, restaurants, etc. Is this “separating citizens into two classes”?
Very same now for people that are not willing to protect others: They are not “2nd Classe citizens” but they are just banned from visiting places where they put others at elevated risk of infecting them (btw.: Very similar definition of such places as the definition used for non smoking requirements).
Jujupilote wrote:
Silvaire has a point as usual.
If having 0,2% of a population infected with a highly infectious disease whose mortality is lower than 0.1%, justifies separating citizens in 2 classes…. I eat my hat.
If you think vaxes will do anything to stop this, look at israeli numbers.To me, liberal democracies are terminated in W Europe, if they ever were.
Well… Sweden doesn’t and to my knowledge neither does Norway (@LeSving would know).
Sweden currently has 66% of the adult population fully vaccinated and 81% have had their first shot. We seem to have accepted that Covid-19 is here to stay and as long as few people get seriously ill, it’s something we’ll have to live with. Some restrictions remain, e.g. on the size of public assemblies and we are still supposed to work from home if able, but on the whole life is back to what it was before the pandemic.
E.g. the policy of my university (Uppsala) is now to have on-campus education again. Some Covid-19 outbreaks among students are expected, but there will be no return to online teaching unless the regional health authorities raises an alarm.
Malibuflyer wrote:
They are not “2nd Classe citizens” but they are just banned from visiting places where they put others at elevated risk of infecting them (btw.: Very similar definition of such places as the definition used for non smoking requirements).
This is just nonsense, or fake news or whatever you want to call it. In Norway there is no such separation if you are vacced or not. Yet we have the lowest number of death per citizen in entire Europe (same as Finland, Iceland). MUCH lower than the average number of the world’s population.
It should be obvious by now that vaccines do not protect a “population” from getting contaminated by corona. The main effect of the vaccines is they prevent each individual from getting seriously ill and die, but only IF the have taken the vaccine. In theory it could ideally protect the population from getting contaminated, but in practice it doesn’t work because:
Right now the Delta variant has almost disappeared in Norway, suppressed by the more contagious Colombian variant. One reason for this is IMO the vaccines themselves. The virus don’t care if it kills or not, it only want to spread and multiply. Hence the variants that spread easily, even in a vacced population, but doesn’t kill, will survive. This also means that vaccine cards and travel restrictions and so on, is in all essence meaningless.
It boils down to a lack of focus. The focus should be to prevent people from dying, nothing else. Right now the focus is on things that don’t matter anymore, not in a population where 60% + is vacced, and where the virus (the new variants) spreads like wildfire nonetheless.
LeSving wrote:
The focus should be to prevent people from dying, nothing else
Don’t agree: It becomes continuously more obvious, that long covid is a significant challenge and even people that were far away from dying in the acute phase might suffer from significant long term problems
In addition: The latest numbers unfortunately show that one can not separate the “keep people from dying” from “keep them from infection”: Deaths are skyrocketing again in many countries:
The focus should be to prevent people from dying, nothing else.
Not even that but to keep the health services from being overwhelmed. Unfortunately we are seeing a trend in this direction in Switzerland at the moment, ICU occupancy by Covid patients is on a steep rise and we are getting close to conditions we had before. The main reason Switzerland now is considering restricting access to a large number of venues and services to people who have the covid certificate (vaccinated, tested or healed) is exactly this.
It is also clear by now that the huge majority (actually almost all) hospitalisations concern people who are not vaccinated. Consequently those who are and still have to follow the measures because of those who refuse start to get more and more pissed off. That is only understandable I think.
LeSving wrote:
t should be obvious by now that vaccines do not protect a “population” from getting contaminated by corona.
…and that is the crucial point here.
Originally we thought Covid vaccines might work like Measles or Smallpox vaccines, and we would achieve “herd immunity” which is based on the vaccine limiting the spread by preventing any, or any symptomatic disease.
It turns out that the Covid spreads enough before being symptomatic, and the vaccine does not prevent progression to an infectious stage in enough patients to ever prevent it from circulating.
It’s just that the policy thinking hasn’t caught up with reality yet.
